Stand in a Circle, 5 Whys, and a Call Center

An effective exercise

Published: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - 14:18

Some time ago, while consulting for a huge call center, I took a group of customer service agents for a little gemba walk and a quick activity to demonstrate a few lean fundamentals. What was scheduled for a 60-minute exercise turned out to be an experience that awakened the agents, several of whom went on to create reports based on Toyota's A3 problem-solving method and on the plan-do-check-act cycle (a method for learning and improvement developed by Walter Shewhart), that added value to the customer and the company.

Stand in a circle

I gave each of the customer service agents a pencil and a piece of paper. We then stood quietly in the middle of the call center for five minutes. There was no talking. We wrote down as many things as we could observe during those five minutes.

Instruction

With a white board, still in the middle of the contact center, I had one of the agents create a tally of the items observed. I showed the team how to create a simple tick sheet and then I asked them, “What’s a good way to visualize this data?”

After considering their responses, I showed them how to create a simple Pareto chart using the tick sheet data. Then, I asked them to consider the categories and the bars: “Is there anything curious about what you see?”

Several of them pointed to the highest bar in the Pareto chart, which was, “There are a lot of people working today.”

I then asked, “You all mentioned that ‘there are a lot of people working today,’ which is the highest bar in the Pareto chart. Why?”

I then showed them how to conduct a simple 5 Whys—the practice of asking, five times, why a failure or problem occurred to be able to get to the root causes of the problem. The discussion went like this:

1. Why are there a lot of agents at the call center? Because there are a lot of inbound warranty calls.
2. Why are there a lot of inbound warranty calls? Because several products from the company are confusing or defective, and customers need replacements.

At this point in our 5 Whys, we created another branch, which looked at the products that lead to inbound calls. In other words, which products are responsible for inbound calls and what is the call volume?

Based on anecdotal data (for the purposes of the exercise), we took roughly 13 products and estimated their inbound call volume. I emphasized to the team that real data should be used, not just their gut or hunch, but real contact volume data. This product/volume data was helpful in helping us form another Pareto chart. The highest bar in the new Pareto chart begged the question, "Why are 56 percent of the contact volume about product X?

The Socratic process I took this team through accomplished several goals, without the group even being aware of it:

• They learned how to use a tick sheet for simple data collection
• They learned how to visualize data from a tick sheet to show an 80/20 via a Pareto chart
• They learned how to use the 5 Whys and simple root cause analysis
• They learned how to be curious and not take processes and events for granted
• They learned how to observe their surroundings and not take what they see for granted
• They learned the necessary interactions between products, customers, the company’s call center activities
• They learned that although they played a seemingly small role in the company, this 60-minute exercise led them to fundamental issues in the company and, with little instruction or prodding on my part, they learned on their own.

Small rocks, a million of them

Turning a traditional business approach on its head can be satisfying. Indeed, watching and helping others grow and stretch and contribute is worthwhile to see and experience. Lean is not about a few big rocks, though they are necessary; lean is more about small rocks, but a lot them.

It’s your turn

What do you think about this approach? How might I improve? A variant of this exercise that I’ve done is to go down the 5S route or the 7 Wastes route. The exercise is effective in either case.

About The Author

Pete Abilla

Pete Abilla wirtes the blog shmula, where he gives his take on technology, business, operations, The Toyota Production System, lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, Queueing Theory, operations research, building software, the customer experience (especially ethnography and design thinking and word-of-mouth marketing).

Abilla is an adjunct professor at Brigham Young University, where he teaches students at the Marriott School of Management in operations and supply chain management. He is also active in the business and technology community in Utah and was peer-nominated as a v|100 for 2009, a recognition awarded to influential business leaders in the state of Utah. He earned his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University in Philosophy and Mathematics and my graduate degree from The University of Chicago in Operations Research.

He's a green-thumb-challenged gardner, a wannabe cook, and happily married to his High School sweetheart.